Welcome to Mouthpiece Online – now hosted by Legends Brass! This site was set up in 2016 by John Hutchinson. A mouthpiece in the broadest sense, it’s full of informative and engaging articles across everything to do with the trumpet. After a decade spent crafting posts about trumpet performance, practice, teaching techniques, trumpet artist interviews, and equipment reviews, John’s career began to take a new direction. Legends Brass has now stepped in to continue building on the foundation of John’s work. Our mission is to build an online community where brass musicians connect to share knowledge and expertise, find out about new equipment and events, learn about horns and players of days gone by, and most of all, have fun. Subscribe below to connect with this community and follow the new path of Mouthpiece Online.

Legends Brass is an online mouthpiece shop specializing in modern versions of vintage trumpet mouthpieces, commercial and sessions mouthpieces, and custom mouthpieces for trumpet and other brass instruments. Co-owners Derek and Leslie Saidak are a husband and wife team who started Legends Brass back in 2011. Read more about them at LEGENDSBRASS.COM.

This resource was set up by John Hutchinson, a UK pro trumpet player, teacher and arranger with extensive experience working with leading manufacturers.

As a young performer, John was a member of both the National Youth Jazz Orchestra and the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain while studying at Chetham’s School of Music.  He then went on to study at the Royal College of Music under James Watson and Malcolm Smith, where he was awarded the ‘Ernest Hall Prize for Trumpet’.

Graduating in 1999, John’s freelance trumpet career has included orchestral work with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, English National Opera, the Royal Opera, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Philharmonic.  In a commercial setting, he has also recorded and performed with Joss Stone, Ronan Keating, Corinne Bailey-Rae, Vanessa Mae, Shapeshifters and Bjork along with many other international artists.

In demand as a composer, arranger and producer, recent years have included projects with Lucky Chops, Superbrass, The Royal Shakespeare Company, The Central Band of the Royal Air Force, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Barry Adamson, as well as varied musical content for online music libraries that can now be heard across all media settings.

A keen educator, John is the trumpet tutor at Shrewsbury School, Head of Brass at Sedbergh School and also offers online lessons to ambitious students around the world.